It
would be easy to dismiss Parker (Jason Statham) as an amoral character, but it
wouldn't necessarily be accurate. Surely,
he does subscribe to any set of moral standards as defined by law. The man is, after all, a career criminal, but to suggest that he does not
follow a moral code would not be true. He
has a fairly strict set of rules for himself, and Parker
is more than happy to follow its eponymous anti-hero down the path established
by those guidelines, if only because, well, there are other characters in the
movie who don't even have his low standards.

Parker
declares his rules early in the movie: "I don't steal from people who can't
afford it; I don't hurt people who don't deserve it." That he announces his mantra during the course of a robbery, as he and
his cohorts wave and point guns at people, is perhaps something of a comfort for
those he is robbing, although one can't help but wonder if any of them are
thinking what we're thinking at that moment: Who is this guy to decide those
things? Another character answers
that later in the movie with a vague, "He is who he is." The statement
does not help.

Statham
is the key here. This is an actor
whom one believes could stand a chance in a staring contest against a brick wall
and who comes across intimidating even while donning a cowboy hat and
appropriating a ridiculous—intentionally so—Texas accent. He's also a little compassionate—relatively so—in a few brief
moments, such as when a yipping dog is quieted by sitting on his knee
("Dogs like me") or when he, disguised as a priest, talks a security
guard down from a panic attack in the middle of the opening robbery sequence. The punch line to that second moment, which plays on the costume, only
works because Statham is sincere during Parker's impromptu therapy session.

In a
way, Parker's code defines the plot of the movie, as the character must be in a
situation where he believes some people deserve to be hurt for anything to
happen. The opportunity rises after
the opening, in which Parker and a team of four other thieves—leader Melander
(Michael Chiklis), nephew-of-a-Chicago-mob-boss Hardwicke (Michah Hauptman), and
two others (Clifton Collins Jr. and Wendell Pierce) who have a line
occasionally—steal the box office money from the Ohio State Fair. Melander has another job planned and wants to use the entire haul as seed
money for it; Parker just wants his cut. By
the end of the debate, the crew leaves Parker for dead on the side of the road.

Parker's
goal is simple: get revenge on the men who did this to him (His rationale is
that chaos is the only result when an agreement is not met, and "No one
likes chaos"). It becomes
ever-so-slightly more complicated when the syndicate leader gets involved,
sending men to track down Parker and the few loved ones he has—his partner in
crime Hurley (Nick Nolte) and his girlfriend Claire (Emma Booth)—who are
introduced in a sloppy series of flashbacks during the opening sequence.

After
that clumsy setup of the little back story and exposition, John J. McLaughlin's
screenplay (based on the novel Flashfire
by Richard Stark—the 19th book in a series about the character) is barebones
and to-the-point. There are no left
turns into betrayals (Even though Hurley's character is screaming for such a
development, he's a loyal associate) or unnecessary complications (Even though
Claire seems set up as a victim, she deftly escapes an assassination attempt). What we see is what we get.

The
same goes for Parker, who sets out on his mission to right the wrong committed
against him without any distractions. One
arrives, though, in the form of Leslie (Jennifer Lopez), a realtor in financial
trouble who's trying to find just one client who will help her get a big
commission. The reason for the two
becoming connected is too hackneyed to explain concisely (It involves a
talkative villain mentioning a house and, of course, the disguise that compels
him to talk with his best approximation of a Texas twang), and their resulting
scenes together (extended montages of house hunting, debates over her
involvement in the plan to rob the four who wronged him, awkward development of
sexual tension between the two—or maybe just on one side) only serve to stall
the momentum director Taylor Hackford has managed to build.

Eventually,
the simplicity of Parker gets the
better of it. Yes, the movie stays
true to Parker's no-frills style of criminality, unapologetically goes along
with his morality (no matter how warped that may be), and offers a few solid
action sequences (The highlight is a brutal, knock-down, drag-out fight in a
hotel room, where we almost think an open balcony door is a fake-out—though it
never is). Parker may have a certain
appeal, but that can only get one so far.